Holly Black by Geektastic (v5) Read Free Book Online Page B

school knows gossip about you and yours
before
or
exactly at the same time
as you.
    So in a high school of less than five hundred students, if a “celebrity”—say, a quarterback—and another “celebrity”—say, a cheerleader
not
his girlfriend—hook up at a party, someone is going to notice.
    And immediately tell, text, and generally spill to everyone he or she knows.
    Montgomery’s posse of ponytailed cheerleaders were obviously trying to protect her from
something
the next day, escorting her from class to class even more closely—and nervously—than usual.
    Or maybe they were trying to protect someone else.
    “Oh, dude,” David said sympathetically in passing, waving to Montgomery from the other side of the hall. “I’m so sorry. After all that, all the stuff you went through. What a jerk.”
    “What?” she asked, stopping. A crowd began to gather. Murmured voices rose: why were these two talking to each other? And about something besides science homework?
    Ryan was coming from the other way.
    The cheerleaders tried to get her walking again.
    “Um? Ryan and Susan?” David said, thinking she might just be confused. If he knew, surely every other person at the school knew. Someone must have told her. “At the party at Shaniqa’s place? Wow, did I get it wrong?”
    “WHAT?!” Montgomery spun around to face Ryan.
    Everyone in the hallway was silent, waiting.
    “YOU!” she screamed, near-incoherent with rage. “YOU?—”
    What Montgomery said next was unimportant. It could have been a thousand different things. She could have called him a
“tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood!”
She could have gone with the classic
“scruffy-looking nerf-herder!”
She might have chosen, appropriate to the situation,
“gods-cursed TOASTER frakker!”
    But in the end it was unimportant what
exactly
she said.
    Because the entire population of Springfield High heard Montgomery K. Bushnell use an insult so geeky, so extreme, that there was no doubt in any other stealth geek’s mind what she was.
    One of them.
    She pushed David out of the way.
    “Excuse me, I’ve got a vampire to slay,” she growled, looking for Susan and Mr. Pointy.
    THE DÉNOUEMENT
    She managed to make it all the way through school, the drive home, and up to her room before crying. It began messily: a chin shake, a couple of coughs, several quick sniffs. She didn’t
want
to cry. She wanted to stay angry, or forget about it entirely.
    Like an addict looking for a fix, she pawed through her neat shelves for something that would stop the pain.
    Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Casablanca. Doctor Zhivago. Sabrina.
…
    Montgomery chose
Sabrina
(the Audrey Hepburn one, of course), figuring the scene with the eggs would at least make her smile.
    She delicately opened the DVD and snapped out the disk, holding it by the edges as if it were glass. She took it into her brother’s room (he had the upstairs TV) and put it in, then sat on the floor, hugging her knees.
    Tears coursed down her cheeks. Her lips moved silently as the story began:
    “Once upon a time…on the North Shore of Long Island, some thirty miles from New York…”
    The sobbing began for real. She took a deep gulp of air—
    —and then realized something.
    “Oh my gosh.” Her eyes went beautifully wide with cheerleadery surprise.
    She jumped up and grabbed her phone, stabbing at numbers. Not even bothering to pause the movie.
    “Hello?” A grumpy female voice picked up from the other end.
    “I GET IT!!!”
Montgomery shouted. “I GET IT!”
    “Um, what?” Ellen asked, obviously holding the phone away from her ear.
    Montgomery paced back and forth, excited. “I get it! The spaceships and the quoting lines and memorizing stupid details about High Elvish and arguing over pronunciations! Before I thought you were all weird for the sake of, you know, just being weird.
    “But I GET IT NOW! You just
really
love it. It’s where you go to. Who you turn to. It’s